You're Fired! So Where Are the Jobs Now?

Sorry. The question in the heading of this post isn't something I can answer. I recognize that the banking and insurance bailout which started with Bush's Paulson and goes on with Obama's Geithner has not produced the promised new jobs, or held on to old ones, or made the lives of most Americans more secure. Am I asking for too much too soon? I don't think so. Nowhere do I see the spark of concern for the unemployed that would - for me - indicate the beginning of an economic and a moral recovery. America's celebration of Susan Boyle's moving performance on British television was probably connected with the public's feeling that we are fast becoming a nation of underdogs - and we want to see some of those so callously discarded by society triumph at last. But you'd have to search hard to find that attitude in American business today.

The major players in business are enjoying their bailout by hoarding the government and the taxpayer's largesse while families are being decimated by pink slips and sweet talk by Human Resources - a division of business that is fast becoming an oxymoron. Trust me I am no tea-party recruit rebelling against the cost of the bailout to taxpayers. My Dad always taught me that it was a privilege to pay taxes - it meant you were earning good money and paying your share of the cost of living in this country. But he had lived through the Great Depression and kept his small business going through the thirties and forties without firing anyone - including some handicapped workers - people who could not have survived without their jobs. For me the anti-tax Republicans are merely depressing in their hatred for the very government that can - if it has the courage - together with business provide practical solutions at this time. This moral obtuseness on the part of business regarding its loyal employees didn't start with this recession In the roaring nineteen eighties and early nineties when mergers were the fashion, the way the so called financial geniuses made their mark was to buy a business on leveraged money, fire much of its staff, and on the savings of salaries declare their profits and their sagacity, even if that business was later to flounder as so many did. The first years would show a profit and that was what the financial wizard's prized. And since the labor movement was moribund they were allowed, indeed praised for their heartlessness. Donald Trump's "You're Fired" became the catchword of the time, and so it remains today.

What we now see is not the loss of jobs by men and women who are untrained to compete in the modern world, but the firing of people who have all the requisite skills - the very best and the brightest who can add the most to our economy are being given the pink slips. And our government seems powerless - indeed indifferent to the Donald Trumpery of this recession. Where, one wonders, were the moral strings attached to the bailout? Where were the laws requiring those institutions to hold on to the maximum number of employees - even at the radical idea of lowering salaries for all - and declaring a moratorium on salaries for the chief executives of the companies?

So many of the recently fired - exhausted by their search on the internet for jobs that aren't there -- turn to the free-lance life; consulting where they can, or trying to establish a new business of their own, providing they can find the funding for it - funding that seems to have been swallowed up by those great banking whales and AIG. The freelance life seems to be the new American way. Well, I spent a lifetime living the American way, and for a long time it was plenty good for me. As a freelance writer starting in the early sixties and going on through the nineties I went through the feast and famine existence of the free-lancer in America. But this was a life I chose. It was not imposed upon me. I'd worked at office jobs as a young college graduate and I knew it was "Hi-diddle-dee-dee a freelance life for me" as Pinocchio, my childhood idol, would say. Okay it was "actor's life" - but the spirit was the same In any case, my choice was not for everyone. Not for most people. That decency exists among American workers is proven time and again. My niece, Jen -- whose husband John McNamara, a hero fireman at the World Trade Center cleanup and Katrina, and who has been undergoing years of cancer treatment -- needed to take time off from her job to be with the ailing John and with her three year old son, Jack. Her fellow office workers donated their vacation salaries to her so that she would have that precious time to be with her family and not lose her needed income. Wouldn't it be wonderful if business itself shared some of this ethical behavior in these difficult times? If so, maybe this recession, for all its pain might be a lesson in decency rather than a sign that so many at the top are still caught in the old trap of crap that begins with "You're fired! And I'm still here."

Comments

[RandVictims]

For a few decades, Americans have been engrossed and fascisnated with "terrorists". Those who will kill themselves and others in order to enact change. We've allowed the corporate media plutocracy and corporate controlled politicians to make us believe fighters were "evil", religiously fanatical, mentally ill or just "hated America". What fuels "terrorism" is hopelessness, poverty, oppression, despair - all the trademarks of the American form of Capitalism.

I am personally aware of a few underprivileged, extremely intelligent teenagers who have been disenfranchised and deprogrammed from the system who spend a lot of their time hacking, trying to learn to build relatively high-tech explosives...They're not passive and submissive like their parents.

America is on it's way to resembling a post-armageddon world from a sci-fi movie and the country will be filled with "terrorists". This is the new reality the Oligarchs have made for us.

[GrainOSand]

Oh, it's popcorn time -- thanks for the heads up!

[GrainOSand]

It is not in a given businesses’ interest to have concern for a human being. At least that is the operating principle of many conglomerates of people providing service and/or creating product for income. In large corporations you are a number, in smaller ones you may be known but only for the way your time and life is abused by the dictates and demands of the job. Before going on I must say that I have worked for companies that did walk and talk high regard for the human capital of the company. I am remiss in any indictment of corporate America if I do not mention this. It is not all dark in the world of employer to employee relations.

That said, I know for sure that enough is not done to retain people in work environments when times get tough. The decision at the executive level to cut lower level staff always seems to occur before cutting executive level salaries or reviewing the necessity of executive level positions. If human life mattered to business, aggregate corporate America would be on the frontlines of the fight against unemployment -- today. Instead many are in the front of the line with their hand out for a bailout and never in line for investment in humanity that pays dividends in inspired employees and earned loyalty promoting ingenuity, heightened productivity, and sustained high quality in workmanship over the long haul. Aggregate corporate America is morally lazy.

[Social Construct]

Charles Dickens would find our world not much different than his.

[DASChicago]

Hey Mr. Yellen, anywhere near Texas is if-fy...

[cocolola]

I realize now that it's not a great thing to totally depend on one source of income. It's probably smart to have some sort of side job going on -- even during boon times. A great piece.

[BuckarooBanzai]

To paraphrase Mae West: "Skills had nuttin to do with it". A good many of us were fired at the beginning of this crisis from companies that were showing profits and paying bonuses. The fact is we were fired because we were older and that we were becoming a serious pension liability for our companies. The fact that older workers push up health-care premiums was also an issue.

What we are used to, and what your father faced, was "income statement recessions" in other words, times get hard, you don't make the income, you can't make the payroll, people have to go. When times change the jobs come back.

What we are seeing now is a "balance sheet recession". People are being evaluated on their long term liability (pensions, healthcare) to the company and are being let go; regardless of their past acheivements and future potential. Those jobs aren't coming back even if the economy improves.

[JobExchange]

There ARE jobs out there, but job seekers have to know how to get around the roadblocks and gatekeepers that keep them hidden and out of reach for so many. While networking does open doors, there are other ways to penetrate the hidden job market and the people behind those jobs.

It's been estimated that only about 20% of openings are advertised. This means the remaining 80% are filled through other means. It's the "other means" that need to be filtered down to people so that they can get back to work and get on with their lives.

One of the things I'm attempting to do is help people learn how to penetrate the wall employers have erected that keep people at arms length--and away from gainful employment. The methods put in place for applying for jobs is fast becoming a dinosaur. It's time to let them become extinct---let the revolution begin!! http://plasticskyscraper.wordpress.com/

[VivaZapata]

the antigovernment rhetoric of the right made it too hard a sell to do what was necessary: which would have been direct investment of government money into programs that would employ and be productive. All that stuff about, "do we want our businesses run like the post office?" I'll tell you that my experiences with the post office have been better than FedEX or UPS.

[Rayme]

That is what is terrifying so many people nowadays. I've talked to people who I think should feel secure about their jobs and they are terrified just as I am that if we lose the job that we have, there will be no job to take it's place. Unemployment checks only last what, one year, two years? The 1930's had large numbers of the unemployed protesting, I can see that coming soon, umemployment checks are running out. Meanwhile our government officials are bailing out and protecting the very people that helped get us here. We are all looking for answers and mainstream media is failing because we are realizing that we are not going to get the honest answers from them.

[Judith Johncox]

Thank you for this . I am so disgusted with the greed and lack of humanity that brought us to this place. I hope that we can right our ship. We need to re develope an economy that is not based on the hunger and need for more and more and more.......the devouring of the hours of our lives and the heart of the family and the community of our nation.People need jobs to live. Shame on those who led too many into this mess.

[themodernleader]

You have hit upon the question that this country refuses to address: Where are jobs coming from to replace the jobs that are fast disappearing, many of them forever? It is symptomatic of our absolute refusal to be honest with ourselves and our depleting condition. We are no longer the wealthiest, economically secure country in the world. Yet, we pretend. We speak of a milieu that exists only in our heads and on television shows.. The real United States of events and actions tell of a much darker, dangerous, suffering and hungry world.